Walking with Jesus: First Sunday of Lent

For Sunday, March 6, 2022

Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13

Lent has begun. Most of us probably have decided on Lenten resolutions: What am I giving up … what am I going to try and change … how can I make myself more into the person the Lord wants and needs me to be?

These are very excellent approaches and models. I would like to add … suggest … an addition to them: Like so many, I have been absorbed in deep prayer over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We echo the Pope’s continued prayer for Peace. Let me suggest considering our Lenten Resolutions in another way:

• Knowing everyone is made in the image and likeness of God, we are also created to be part of larger groups: family, neighborhood, community, faith traditions, our country, our world. Jesus calls us to be inclusive of all and bring God’s love to our whole world.
• We have been guided through life through a series of transitions: school, college, marriage, children, death of loved ones, career changes, divorce, religious conversion, coming out, etc. Ukraine, Russia, the world — are going through transition now. Maria Wilke writes in Letters to a Young Poet that perhaps God “… requires of you precisely this existential anxiety in order to begin. Precisely these days of transition are perhaps the period when everything in you is working on Him” — on our relationship with God and bringing His love, via our love, to others.

I experience this by knowing and deepening my relationship with God who is love and loves me.

Moses has led the Israelites from slavery in Egypt … through the attack of the elite soldiers sent by the Pharaoh … their journey from Egypt through the Sinai desert ... and now they are ready to cross the Jordan River and enter the Promised Land. In today’s passage, Moses is urging the Israelites to recall each year the blessings God has bestowed upon them, beginning with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the faith journey of the patriarchs and their wanderings. Each step along their way they've had to set aside their own personal agenda and place their complete trust in God and His divine plan. In Egypt they have been accepted, then mistreated and oppressed. God has heard their cry for help and showed His divine power. By remembering these happenings and God’s presence and care, perhaps they can avoid missteps in their continued faith journey. Today they are reminded to bring a basket of their “first fruits” to the priest, acknowledging that God has always been faithful to His covenant:

• Exodus 29:45: “I will dwell among in the midst of the Israelites and will be their God”
• Jeremiah 32:38: “They shall be My People, and I will be their God.”
• 2 Corinthians 6:16: “What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said: ‘I will live with them and move among them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people.’”

This reflects Israel’s faith in the generous and powerful God who makes and always keeps those promises. They are to keep their covenant with that God who is their God.

Paul has been focusing on the contrast between righteousness from perfect observance of the Law and righteousness that comes from faith in Christ. He emphasizes that faith in Christ is accessible to all, but people have to hear this … they have to see it. So I ask: Am I living what I have been gifted with and am called to be, that witness of God’s love for all?

After His baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus goes to the desert wilderness area near Jericho and faces the Devil’s temptations. Here Jesus represents both Himself and Israel. As the Messiah, Jesus is tempted to use His relationship with God to make His life easier, by avoiding pain (hunger) or expecting God to save Him from dangers and death. Jesus shows that He and all peoples can triumph over pain, suffering, temptation and sin by total faith in God’s love and God’s plan. Jesus is now transitioning to His mission of being our Savior. He knows that His mission will lead to death. His transitions, like everyone, involve struggles, not being able to control our future, and pain.

Many things compete for our attention and cause huge distractions from our relationship with God. This is why Lent is upon us. It is a wonderful opportunity to prioritize our relationship with God who loves us every moment. Review past successful ways: prayer, spiritual reading, Mass, Rosary, Novenas, Divine Mercy, adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. Whatever works and wherever the Spirit leads us has to be our focus.

Pray. Be Grateful. Let God love me just the way I am now — and share. God is with me every moment; He loves me that much. Sit with God. Share with Him. Love Him.

So I reflect on:

• I think about the family/community I grew up in. How does that affect how I see my place on God’s “team?”
• St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, says that our impulses come from three places: from evil, from self, from God. As we wrestle with temptations that come this Lent, how can we recognize where they come from? How can we counteract them with the gifts God has given us?
  

Sacred Space 2022 states:

“That Jesus was tested throughout His ministry was widely held in early Christianity. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us, ‘For we do not have a high priest [Jesus] who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.’”

Another suggestion from Sacred Space 2022 for Friday, March 4, states:

“Spend some time each day allowing the joy of God to fill your heart. Spend a little time mourning with Him also as joy is lost for so many. Any fasting is to remind us that the Lord of all joy suffers in His people, maybe those near to us. True prayer brings us near to others and near to God, especially near to those in any type of pain. It also brings us near to ourselves — our hopes, desires and anything about the mystery of ourselves.”